Contents

Monday

We had begun to collaborate with the UNAM-Genomics_Mexico team, they have catalogued our communications in detail. We had given them advice on protocols but they were not having any more success so at their request Peter sent them DNA for 5 constructs, luxCDABE and Luciferase and LREs from both Luciola cruciata and Photinus pyralis with and without promoters.

Paul's plate reader experiments continued to give somewhat unexpected results, with an increase in light emission which seemed to be correlated with entry into stationary phase. We wanted to know if this was some strange promoter effect or a feature of the luciferase pathway. For these purposes Emily and Bill attempted to assemble fluorescent proteins both under pBAD alone and under pBAD with the rest of the operon.
Paul set up another plate reader experiment with a wide range of arabinose concentrations used for induction.
Will performed further site-directed mutagenesis of LC luciferase, in case Ben's failed.

Tuesday

Emily and Bill continued trying to assembly the fluorescent proteins with pBAD and PP luciferase. The process proved more difficult than we had hoped, but we got there eventually.

Theo also continued experimenting with his electrical engineering skills with the E.glometer: trying to build a DIY light measurement device.

Wednesday

Paul continued with his plate reader experiments, this time comparing the light output from all the different L. cruciata luciferase colour mutants.

The transformations from the fluorescent proteins showed some very small colonies. We left them to grow for longer.

Thursday

Today there were decent sized colonies on the fluorescent protein plates. However, it looked like there was a lot of cross-contamination - red colonies on lots of different plates that shouldn't have RFP. Very confusing. After examining the plates we just took colonies that appeared to be excited at the correct wavelengths and glow the right colour.

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Aware that next week we would need to pack up the lab to move into Jim Ajioka's lab in parasitology next week, we started slowly tidying up the lab :( It was a sad time indeed. Especially when the motivational posters of Anja had to come down off the walls.